When a Man's Single: A Tale of Literary Life

He yawned like a man glad to get to the end of his sentence, or sorry that he had begun it.

'But I thought,' said Mrs. Meredith, 'that the reason you walk round and round the island by yourself so frequently is because you can think out articles on it?'

'Yes,' Dick answered, 'the island looks like a capital place to think on, and I always start off on my round meaning to think hard. After that all is a blank till I am back at the Tawny Owl, when I remember that I have forgotten to think.'

'Will ought to enjoy this,' remarked Nell.

'That is my brother, Mr. Angus,' Mary said to Rob; 'he is to spend part of his holidays here.'

'I remember him,' Rob answered, smiling. Mary blushed, however, remembering that the last time Will and Greybrooke met Rob there had been a little scene.

'He will enjoy the fishing,' said Dick. 'I have only fished myself three or four times, and I am confident I hooked a minnow yesterday.'

'I saw a little boy,' Nell said, 'fishing from the island to-day, and his mother had strapped him to a tree in case he might fall in.'

'When I saw your young brother at Silchester,' Rob said to Mary, 'he had a schoolmate with him.'

'Ah, yes,' Dick said; 'that was the man who wanted to horsewhip you, you know.'

'I thought he and Miss Meredith were great friends,' Rob retorted. He sometimes wondered how much Dick cared for Nell.

'It was only the young gentleman's good-nature,' Abinger explained, while Nell drew herself up indignantly; 'he found that he had to give up either Nell or a cricket match, and so Nell was reluctantly dropped.'

'That was not how you spoke,' Nell said to Dick in a low voice, 'when I told you all about him, poor boy, in your chambers.'

'You promised to be a sister to him, I think,' remarked Abinger. 'Ah, Nell, it is not a safe plan that. How many brothers have you now?'

Dick held up his hand for Mary's banjo, and, settling himself comfortably in a corner, twanged and sang, while the lanterns caught myriads of flies, and the bats came and went.

When Cœlebs was a bolder blade,
And ladies fair were coy,
His search was for a wife, he said,
The time I was a boy.
But Cœlebs now has slothful grown
(I learn this from her mother),
Instead of making her his own,
He asks to be her brother.

Last night I saw her smooth his brow,
He bent his head and kissed her;
They understand each other now,
She's going to be his sister.
Some say he really does propose,
And means to gain or lose all,
And that the new arrangement goes,
To soften her refusal.

He talks so wild of broken hearts,
Of futures that she'll mar,
He says on Tuesday he departs
For Cork or Zanzibar.
His death he places at her door,
Yet says he won't resent it;
Ah, well, he talked that way before,
And very seldom meant it.

Engagements now are curious things,
'A kind of understandin','
Although they do not run to rings,
They're good to keep your hand in.
No rivals now, Tom, Dick, and Hal,
They all love one another,
For she's a sister to them all,
And every one's her brother.

In former days when men proposed,
And ladies said them No,
The laws that courtesy imposed
Made lovers pack and go.
But now that they may brothers be,
So changed the way of men is,
That, having kissed, the swain and she
Resume their game at tennis.

Ah, Nelly Meredith, you may
Be wiser than your mother,
But she knew what to do when they
Proposed to be her brother.
Of these relations best have none,
They'll only you encumber;
Of wives a man may have but one,
Of sisters any number.

Dick disappeared into the kitchen with Mrs. Meredith to show her how they make a salad at the Wigwam, and Nell and her father went a-fishing from a bedroom window. The night was so silent now that Rob and Mary seemed to have it to themselves. A canoe in a blaze of coloured light drifted past without a sound. The grass on the bank parted, and water-rats peeped out. All at once Mary had nothing to say, and Rob shook on his stool. The moon was out looking at them.

'Oh,' Mary cried, as something dipped suddenly in the water near them.

'It was only a dabchick,' Rob guessed, looking over the rail.

'What is a dabchick?' asked Mary.

Rob did not tell her. She had not the least desire to know.

In the river, on the opposite side from where the Tawny Owl lay, a stream drowns itself. They had not known of its existence before, but it was roaring like a lasher to them now. Mary shuddered slightly, turning her face to the island, and Rob took a great breath as he looked at her. His hand held her brown sunshade that was ribbed with velvet, the sunshade with the preposterous handle that Mary held upside down. Other ladies carried their sunshades so, and Rob resented it. Her back was toward him, and he sat still, gazing at the loose blue jacket that only reached her waist. It was such a slender waist that Rob trembled for it.

The trees that hung over the house-boat were black, but the moon made a fairyland of the sward beyond. Mary could only see the island between heavy branches, but she looked straight before her until tears dimmed her eyes. Who would dare to seek the thoughts of a girl at such a moment? Rob moved nearer her. Her blue cap was tilted back, her chin rested on the rail. All that was good in him was astir when she turned and read his face.

'I think I shall go down now,' Mary said, becoming less pale as she spoke. Rob's eyes followed her as she moved toward the ladder.

'Not yet,' he called after her, and could say no more. It was always so when they were alone; and he made himself suffer for it afterwards.

Mary stood irresolutely at the top of the ladder. She would not turn back, but she did not descend. Mr. Meredith was fishing lazily from the lower deck, and there was a murmur of voices in the saloon. On the road running parallel to the river traps and men were shadows creeping along to Hampton. Lights were going out there. Mary looked up the stretch of water and sighed.

'Was there ever so beautiful a night?' she said.

'Yes,' said Rob, at her elbow, 'once at Dome Castle, the night I saw you first.'

'I don't remember,' said Mary hastily, but without going down the ladder.

'I might never have met you,' Rob continued grimly, 'if some man in Silchester had not murdered his wife.'

Mary started and looked up at him. Until she ceased to look he could not go on.

'The murder,' he explained, 'was of more importance than Colonel Abinger's dinner, and so I was sent to the castle. It is rather curious to trace these things back a step. The woman enraged her husband into striking her, because she had not prepared his supper. Instead of doing that she had been gossiping with a neighbour, who would not have had time for gossip had she not been laid up with a sprained ankle. It came out in the evidence that this woman had hurt herself by slipping on a marble, so that I might never have seen you had not two boys, whom neither of us ever heard of, challenged each other to a game at marbles.'

'It was stranger that we should meet again in London,' Mary said.

'No,' Rob answered, 'the way we met was strange, but I was expecting you.'

Mary pondered how she should take this, and then pretended not to hear it.

'Was it not rather The Scorn of Scorns that made us know each other?' she asked.

'I knew you after I read it a second time,' he said; 'I have got that copy of it still.'